“Stare decisis? Never heard of it.”
And “our legal tradition” is just another term for the body of all of the precedents that courts use.
I’m still waiting for folks to figure out that, once precedent is ignored, the Supreme Court has almost no power at all. They decide individual cases, and then other cases get decided based on those precedents. But if precedent doesn’t matter, and they overturn some individual’s same-sex marriage, then the lower courts can still hold that every same-sex marriage except that one specific one is still valid.
But that’s not how it works. The lower courts issue their rulings based on the most recent precedent set by SCOTUS. If they deviate from this, a higher court is virtually certain to overturn their decision, up to the Supreme Court if necessary.
In other words, the only court that can ignore precedents with impunity is the Supreme Court itself.
If the Supreme Court decides tomorrow in some specific case that same-sex marriage is no longer protected by the Constitution, lower courts will start ruling the same way based on this new precedent.
Just like laws infringing on a woman’s right to choose an abortion are now no longer being struck down in the lower courts like they were after Roe v. Wade and before the 2022 Dobbs ruling.
No worries now, because the EPA doesn’t want to regulate emissions.
Then it’s time to drown 'em in cases. Lower and appellate courts both ruling differently on the smallest minutia until SCOTUS can’t rule on them all.
I wonder how Thomas feels about Loving v. Virginia (given that his wife is white)?
If Thomas was consistent, Loving should be over-turned (I have seen some say, as a joke, that this is how Thomas gets a divorce without losing half his stuff and as a Catholic sidesteps problems there too).
In the New Right, hypocrisy is embraced openly. It isn’t what you do so much as who you are.